New high-end Denon processors

[deacongreg]

Originally Posted by Z Man

Personally I really don't mind the way the Denon AVP looks, and it matches my Denon 2500BTCI perfectly. And like you said it's what it sounds like and offers that are the most important things. I mean products like Halcro's SSP-180 and SSP-200 look way cool, but their HDMI implementation is glitchy as hell. The Denon's HDMI's on the other hand work flawlessly each and every time. So what good is it to have a beautiful looking piece if it doesn't do what you want it to?

Like you said, the Denon (and Integra) are out there now and have proved themselves to work. I can't speak about the Integra's sound quality, but I know that this Denon AVP is pretty awesome.


Seth

The reviews of the Integra have been stellar. The DTC 9.8 kennyt has used, and he liked it as well. And for the price, it is definitely hard to beat. Listen, like everyone got on my case w/HD DVD Blu-Ray, and being an early adopter and enjoying HD now. Seth, you can enjoy connecting everything today!!

[Z Man]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

The reviews of the Integra have been stellar. The DTC 9.8 kennyt has used, and he liked it as well. And for the price, it is definitely hard to beat. Listen, like everyone got on my case w/HD DVD Blu-Ray, and being an early adopter and enjoying HD now. Seth, you can enjoy connecting everything today!!

I agree, I am enjoying TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, high quality music streaming, Realta processing etc, right now. So like you were when you got into Blu-ray and HD DVD, being an early adopter let's you enjoy the good stuff now. But what's great about the Denon (and Integra), is that the technology used in them will stay current for many years to come. So with my Denon, they put enough forward thinking into it, that I can feel pretty confident that I'm not going to end up with an outdated product 2-3 years down the road. TrueHD and DTS-HD MA are new audio formats that will likely become the standard and will be with us for at least the next 7-8 years before another new audio format is introduced.

So I feel I make a great choice getting the Denon AVP.


Seth

[Z Man]

I finally got to try out the music streaming abilities. And I'm happy to report that it works great!! Sound quality is superb! I am using Windows Media Player 11, and it's integration to the Denon AVP was seamless. You go into network setup on the Denon and find out what the info is for your preamp (MAC Address, etc), and configure your router to accept the address. Then open up Windows Media Player 11, click the Library tab, then click in media sharing and turn sharing to on.

After this the Windows Media Player automatically recognizes the Denon and adds a Denon icon in it's sharing window. It then asks to allow or deny access, select allow and that's it! You're done!

WMA Player 11 will allow streaming of WMA Lossless, flac (with special download software), and .WAV. I have been comparing the sound quality on both flac and WMA Lossless and have found them both to sound virtually identical, which is to say they both sound excellent!. Just for kicks I compared flac and WMA Lossless to .WAV, and while flac and WMA Lossless sound amazing, the .WAV did edge them out just a bit. The sound with .WAV was a bit more detailed, and offered a deeper and a tad wider soundstage. It was also a bit smoother, especially in the upper midrange. I did all my comparisons using Direct mode.

In comparing flac, WMA Lossless, and .WAV to the original CD, I found .WAV to sound nearly identical. Flac and WMA Lossless were both tied and came in a close second to .WAV. But for most listening I believe that either WMA Lossless or flac will do a splendid job. So for most of my music I will use WMA Lossless, and for my reference CD's I'll use WAV.

I have found the sound quality to be so good that it may just replace my CD player for critical listening. I am very impressed.

For my listening tests I used the following albums:

Peter White- Confidential
Strunz & Farah- Stringweave
Johannes Linstead- Cafe' Tropical
Michael Buble'- It's Time
John Mayall and Friends- Along for the Ride

Another thing that really impressed me about streaming music, is that if a certain CD was HDCD encoded, that encoding is also in the ripped version. So when that music is streamed, the Denon decodes it automatically (a small HDCD logo shows up in the Denon's display window) and gives an even higher quality of sound. This is excellent as I own quite a few HDCD encoded CD's that I have ripped to my PC.

Also with the Denon, using Windows Media Player 11 on a PC, all cover art, album title, artist info, track listing, track time etc., is displayed on your TV. All album info is also displayed on the Denon's display window (except cover art). When using WMA Lossless and .WAV through Windows Media Player 11, all album info is automatically tagged. And through the Denon's GUI one can select artist, album, genres, and playlists.

So now I can totally say that the Denon AVP-A1HDCI more than lives up to it claims. It's one heck of an amazing performer for all things. Movie soundtracks, 2 channel music, multichannel music, streamed music, DVD upsampling using HQV Realta. And to top it all off, it is highly configurable to to satisfy the needs of pretty much anyone. I can't recommend this preamp highly enough. As you can tell I'm loving it!


Seth

[kennyt]

Well, my new Denon AVP-A1HDCi got to my home yesterday! Now if I weren't 500 miles away I might have hooked it up by now!

[Z Man]

Originally Posted by kennyt

Well, my new Denon AVP-A1HDCi got to my home yesterday! Now if I weren't 500 miles away I might have hooked it up by now!

Too cool! Bummer that you're away and can't hook it up yet, but I'm sure it'll be connected soon enough. Congrats! Looking forward to your review.


Seth

[kennyt]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

The DTC 9.8 kennyt has used, and he liked it as well.

Sorry to say I have not had a DTC 9.8 yet, Andrew got one, I wasn't able to find one locally and Integra doesn't allow on line sales, this was part of why I bought the Denon.